Endnotes

1. Blind Alley would be the nearest English equivalent. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

2. Wife-of-a-regiment. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

3. A great Russian general and a universal military genius and strategist. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

4. “Spindle-Shanks! Spindle-Shanks!” —⁠B. G. G. ↩

5. “Horse-collar.” —⁠B. G. G. ↩

6. “Lenten.” —⁠B. G. G. ↩

7. “Made out of matting.” —⁠B. G. G. ↩

8. The reference here is to a famous folktale⁠—best known in Pushkin’s version, “The Little Gold Fish.” A fisherman, having caught a little gold fish, is promised the fulfillment of all his wishes for its release. All his demands, instigated by his wife, are granted, beginning with a substitution of a new trough for a broken one, and up to the attainment of rank and wealth; but finally the wife insists upon the fulfillment of a wish so insolent that, upon his return from interviewing his benefactress, the fisherman finds his wife sitting at the same old broken trough, before his former humble hut. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

9. A verst is about two-thirds of a mile. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

10. Three horses, harnessed abreast. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

11. Abrotanum; southern wood. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

12. Holy Lake. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

13. In midsummer. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

14. In English in the original. —⁠B. G. G. ↩

15. I.e. There was no family name. The name is Polish, not Russian. ↩